Milky Way star with strange chemistry is from dwarf galaxy

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Astronomers have discovered a star in the Milky Way Galaxy with a chemical composition unlike any other star in our Galaxy. This chemical composition has been seen in a small number of stars in dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. This suggests that the star was part of a dwarf galaxy that merged into the Milky Way.
via Science Daily
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The space rock that hit the moon at 61,000 kilometers an hour

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Observers watching January's total eclipse of the Moon saw a rare event, a short-lived flash as a meteorite hit the lunar surface. Astronomers now think the space rock collided with the moon at 61,000 kilometers an hour, excavating a crater 10 to 15 meters across.
via Science Daily
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What a dying star's ashes tell us about the birth of our solar system

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Researchers discovered a dust grain forged in a stellar explosion before our solar system was born. Atom-level analysis of the specimen reveals new insights about how stars end their lives and seed the universe with the building blocks of new stars and planets.
via Science Daily
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Ice feature on Saturn's giant moon, TItan

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Research team finds huge ice feature on Titan while trying to understand where Saturn's largest moon gets all of its methane. This research, which used Principal Components Analysis in an unconventional way, also validated results from previous Titan missions.
via Science Daily
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Magma is the key to the moon's makeup

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For more than a century, scientists have squabbled over how Earth's moon formed. Now researchers say they may have the answer.
via Science Daily
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Astronomers discover 2,000-year-old remnant of a nova

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Researchers have discovered the remains of a nova in a galactic globular cluster, located near the center of Messier 22. The finding, using modern instruments, confirms one of the oldest observations of an event outside the solar system.
via Science Daily
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Giant planets and big data: What deep learning reveals about Saturn's storms

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A deep learning approach to detecting storms on Saturn shows the vast regions affected by storms and that dark storm clouds contain material swept up from the lower atmosphere.
via Science Daily
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Squid skin inspires creation of next-generation space blanket

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Drawing design inspiration from the skin of stealthy sea creatures, engineers have developed a next-generation, adaptive space blanket that gives users the ability to control their temperature. The innovation is detailed in a study published today in Nature Communications.
via Science Daily
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Hubble snaps a crowded cluster

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This sparkling burst of stars is Messier 75. It is a globular cluster: a spherical collection of stars bound together by gravity. Clusters like this orbit around galaxies and typically reside in their outer and less-crowded areas, gathering to form dense communities in the galactic suburbs.
via Science Daily
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Scientists discover what powers celestial phenomenon STEVE

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The celestial phenomenon known as STEVE is likely caused by a combination of heating of charged particles in the atmosphere and energetic electrons like those that power the aurora, according to new research. In a new study, scientists found STEVE's source region in space and identified two mechanisms that cause it.
via Science Daily
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New Hubble measurements confirm universe is expanding faster than expected

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New measurements from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope confirm that the Universe is expanding about 9% faster than expected based on its trajectory seen shortly after the big bang, astronomers say.
via Science Daily
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Extracting something from nothing: A bright glow from empty space

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Particles traveling through empty space can emit bright flashes of gamma rays by interacting with the quantum vacuum, according to a new study.
via Science Daily
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NASA, FEMA, international partners plan asteroid impact exercise

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NASA and other U.S. agencies and space science institutions, along with international partners, will participate in a 'tabletop exercise' that will play out a realistic -- but fictional -- scenario for an asteroid on an impact trajectory with Earth.
via Science Daily
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Rapid destruction of Earth-like atmospheres by young stars

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The discoveries of thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system has made questions about the potential for life to form on these planets. Fundamentally important for the habitability of a planet is whether or not it can hold onto an atmosphere. A new study by has shown that young stars can rapidly destroy the atmospheres of Earth-like planets, which is a significant additional difficulty for the formation of life outside our solar system.
via Science Daily
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NASA's InSight detects first likely 'quake' on Mars

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NASA's Mars InSight lander has measured and recorded for the first time ever a likely 'marsquake'. This is the first recorded trembling that appears to have come from inside the planet, as opposed to being caused by forces above the surface, such as wind.
via Science Daily
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Auroral 'speed bumps' are more complicated, scientists find

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Researchers find that 'speed bumps' in space, which can slow down satellites orbiting closer to Earth, are more complex than originally thought.
via Science Daily
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New concept for novel fire extinguisher in space

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Researchers have developed a new concept of fire extinguishing, named Vacuum Extinguish Method. VEM is based on the 'reverse' operation of the conventional fire extinguishing procedure: It sucks the combustion products, even flame and the firing source itself, into a vacuum chamber to clean up the firing zone. This concept is advantageous for space use, as it prevents the spread of harmful combustible products throughout the enclosed cabin.
via Science Daily
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Hubble celebrates its 29th birthday with unrivaled view of the Southern Crab Nebula

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This incredible image of the hourglass-shaped Southern Crab Nebula was taken to mark the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's 29th anniversary in space. The nebula, created by a binary star system, is one of the many objects that Hubble has demystified throughout its productive life. This new image adds to our understanding of the nebula and demonstrates the telescope's continued capabilities.
via Science Daily
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Mercury has a solid inner core: New evidence

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Scientists have long known that Earth and Mercury have metallic cores. Like Earth, Mercury's outer core is composed of liquid metal, but there have only been hints that Mercury's innermost core is solid. Now, in a new study, scientists report evidence that Mercury's inner core is indeed solid and that it is very nearly the same size as Earth's solid inner core.
via Science Daily
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Powerful particles and tugging tides may affect extraterrestrial life

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Two new studies, one on high-energy particles and the other on tidal forces, may bring into question the habitability of TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets.
via Science Daily
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Five planets revealed after 20 years of observation

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To confirm the presence of a planet, it is necessary to wait until it has made one or more revolutions around its star. This can take from a few days for the closest to the star to decades for the furthest away. Only a telescope dedicated to the search for exoplanets can carry out such measurements over such long periods of time, which is the case of the EULER telescope of UNIGE.
via Science Daily
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How to defend the Earth from asteroids

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The Chelyabinsk meteor caused extensive ground damage and numerous injuries when it exploded on impact with Earth's atmosphere in 2013; to prevent another such impact, scientists plan to use a simple yet ingenious way to spot tiny near-Earth objects.
via Science Daily
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NASA's Cassini reveals surprises with Titan's lakes

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On its final flyby of Saturn's largest moon in 2017, NASA's Cassini spacecraft gathered radar data revealing that the small liquid lakes in Titan's northern hemisphere are surprisingly deep, perched atop hills and filled with methane.
via Science Daily
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CubeSats prove their worth for scientific missions

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Only a few years ago, the astronomy and heliophysics communities were skeptical about whether CubeSats could reliably obtain scientific data. But these breadloaf-size satellites have proven their ability to return useful data.
via Science Daily
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Astronomers discover third planet in the Kepler-47 circumbinary system

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Astronomers have discovered a third planet in the Kepler-47 system, securing the system's title as the most interesting of the binary-star worlds. Using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, a team of researchers detected the new Neptune-to-Saturn-size planet orbiting between two previously known planets.
via Science Daily
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Asteroids help scientists to measure the diameters of faraway stars

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Using the unique capabilities of telescopes specialized on cosmic gamma rays, scientists have measured the smallest apparent size of a star on the night sky to date. The measurements reveal the diameters of a giant star 2,674 light-years away and of a sun-like star at a distance of 700 light-years.
via Science Daily
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Asteroids help scientists measure distant stars

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We gaze up at them, we wish upon them, we even sing about swinging on them. But the one thing we haven't been able to do with a star is figure out how big it is...until now.
via Science Daily
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Astronomers take first, high-resolution look at huge star-forming region of Milky Way

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A team of astronomers used a newly commissioned radio telescope in South Korea to make the first high-resolution observations of the molecular clouds within a star-forming region of the Milky Way. The first good look at the galactic region indicated large molecular clouds about 180 light years across with a mass equal to about 100,000 masses of our sun.
via Science Daily
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TESS finds its first Earth-sized planet

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A nearby system hosts the first Earth-sized planet discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite, as well as a warm sub-Neptune-sized world. This milestone sets the path for finding smaller planets around even smaller stars, and those planets may potentially be habitable.
via Science Daily
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Tiny fragment of a comet found inside a meteorite

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Astronomers have made a surprising discovery that gives clues to how solar system formed.
via Science Daily
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Meteoroid strikes eject precious water from moon

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Streams of meteoroids striking the Moon infuse the thin lunar atmosphere with a short-lived water vapor, according to researchers using data from NASA's LADEE spacecraft. The findings will help scientists understand the history of lunar water.
via Science Daily
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Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

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A physicist has shown that wormholes can exist: tunnels in curved space-time, connecting two distant places, through which travel is possible. But don't pack your bags for a trip to other side of the galaxy yet; although it's theoretically possible, it's not useful for humans to travel through, said the author of the study.
via Science Daily
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Hubble peers at cosmic blue bauble

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Messier 3: containing an incredible half-million stars, this 8-billion-year-old cosmic bauble is one of the largest and brightest globular clusters ever discovered.
via Science Daily
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NASA's landmark Twins Study reveals resilience of human body in space

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Newly published research reveals some interesting, surprising and reassuring data about how one human body adapted to -- and recovered from -- the extreme environment of space.
via Science Daily
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Formation of a magnetar 6.5 billion light years away

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Building on recent discoveries about neutron stars, a team of astronomers has identified X-ray observations that are consistent with the merger of two neutron stars. This merger is believed to have formed a magnetar, which is a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field.
via Science Daily
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Working together as a 'virtual telescope,' observatories around the world produce first direct images of a black hole

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An international team of over 200 astronomers has captured the first direct images of a black hole. They accomplished this remarkable feat by coordinating the power of eight major radio observatories on four continents, to work together as a virtual, Earth-sized telescope.
via Science Daily
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New model accurately predicts harmful space weather

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A new, first-of-its-kind space weather model reliably predicts space storms of high-energy particles that are harmful to many satellites and spacecraft orbiting in the Earth's outer radiation belt.
via Science Daily
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Iron volcanoes may have erupted on metal asteroids

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Metallic asteroids are thought to have started out as blobs of molten iron floating in space. As if that's not strange enough, scientists now think that as the metal cooled and solidified, volcanoes spewing liquid iron could have erupted through a solid iron crust onto the surface of the asteroid.
via Science Daily
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Astronomers find evidence of a planet with a mass almost 13 times that of Jupiter

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Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), in Chile's Atacama Desert, will help to obtain answers on the formation and evolution of these exotic environments, as well as the possibility of life there.
via Science Daily
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Revolutionary camera allows scientists to predict evolution of ancient stars

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For the first time scientists have been able to prove a decades old theory on stars thanks to a revolutionary high-speed camera.
via Science Daily
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All microbes and fungi on the International Space Station catalogued

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A comprehensive catalogue of the bacteria and fungi found on surfaces inside the International Space Station (ISS) is being presented in a study published in the open-access journal Microbiome.
via Science Daily
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Unexpected rain on sun links two solar mysteries

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Researchers find rain on the sun in an unexpected place. The findings could create a new link between two of the biggest mysteries in solar physics.
via Science Daily
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Heavy metal planet fragment survives destruction from dead star

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A fragment of a planet that has survived the death of its star has been discovered by astronomers in a disc of debris formed from destroyed planets, which the star ultimately consumes.
via Science Daily
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Solar wind: And the blobs just keep on coming

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Scientists re-inspected 45-year-old Helios data, finding long trains of massive blobs -- like lava lamp's otherworldly bubbles, but 50 to 500 times the size of Earth -- that ooze from the sun every 90 minutes or so.
via Science Daily
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Dark matter is not made up of tiny black holes

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An international team of researchers has put a theory speculated by the late Stephen Hawking to its most rigorous test to date, and their results have ruled out the possibility that primordial black holes smaller than a tenth of a millimeter make up most of dark matter.
via Science Daily
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Bacterial factories could manufacture high-performance proteins for space missions

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Nature has evolved protein-based substances with mechanical properties that rival even the best synthetic materials. Pound for pound, spider silk is stronger and tougher than steel. But unlike steel, the natural fiber cannot be mass-produced. Today, scientists report a method in which bacteria produce spider silk and other proteins that could be useful during space missions.
via Science Daily
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Calculating temperature inside moon to help reveal its inner structure

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Little is known about the inner structure of the Moon, but a major step forward was made by a scientist who conducted experiments that enabled her to determine the temperature at the boundary of the Moon's core and mantle.
via Science Daily
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